


Obsolete Moon

by Calesvol



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Afterlife, Character Study, Enemies to Lovers, Explicit Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Purgatory, Reconciliation, Sexual Tension, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:40:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25363999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calesvol/pseuds/Calesvol
Summary: In every generation, there is a sun and moon. Yet, what happens when an abandoned sun finds an obsolete moon straying into its sky?
Relationships: Jiraiya/Uchiha Madara
Kudos: 3





	Obsolete Moon

Warning(s): T, none

* * *

When death finally comes for him, it is not the delivery of silvery, translucent wings to usher him to the Pure Lands, but something as heavy as clay and soil. Madara had known his body was dying, that his endgame was finished. There was nothing left to fight for, and as the pulse in his veins grew dimmer and dimmer, the light faded incrementally until there was nothing left but darkness.

It’s with a flood of air in his nostrils that fools him into thinking he’s alive again, the humid weight of a hot summer oppressive on his skin while the loud, dry drone of a cicada sounds like the height of daytime, when hours were ahead until a cool evening might finally be ushered through. Madara’s heavy eyelids blinked open and long eyelashes touched thick stalks of grass, pushing himself on his knees with a soft grunt, siting on his haunches.

This… couldn’t be life, could it? Glancing around, he noticed three blunted poles of wood half the size of a man situated to his right, while the turf to his left fed unto a gravel path that meandered past his immediate view. Huffing, Madara kneaded his chakra and concentrated, sending his sensory prowess a far as it could extend, startled by what it revealed.

Although there was another flicker of _something_ , there was no one.

Composing himself to his feet, the Uchiha froze at what he saw looming in the distance, as sure as the sun rising and setting.

Hokage Rock, with five faces stoically preserved in stone. Though Madara hadn’t been here in almost a century, he knew where this was.

Konohagakure, exactly as it had looked before the war, he was sure of it.

Dazed did Madara stagger from his feet and stride into the town proper, amid a comfortable congestion of modest buildings huddling closer together as one strode through their streets, sloping roofs glancing harsh sunlight while screen doors and latticed windows denied a perspective of life inside, despite how Madara found himself unable to help taking pause at the first place with short Noren dividers suspended from the entryways. The Uchiha lifted away a flap as a billowing wave of grease fire and comfortable warmth suffused his features, greeted by a warm, working interior as cooking ranges inundated with pots and pans of fried foods were admittedly inviting. Most bizarre of all, he thought, were the two bowls of ramen filled to the brim, its clear bream offering little to the imagination of the rich ingredients used.

_Two bowls? Why simply two?_

Puzzled but utterly curious, Madara filtered throughout the other restaurants on the street: a tea house with operating but abandoned faculties possessed a bevy of tables beautifully set, though with only one meant for two situated with two place settings; a bar with a jazzy tune proliferating from hidden speakers and a fully stocked gallery of spirits looking as though it had been in recent operation saw only a single tokkuri of sake and two ochoko at two of the bar stools.

Successively, it’s what he saw: places that served foodstuffs prepared for only two people, but completely devoid of any life but himself. Him, and whoever else he surmised he shared this place with.

This alone proved it had to be some… median realm. Between the living and the Pure Lands, as he highly doubted that anyone he personally knew was here. After all, Madara knew the traces of nearly every person of his generation like a signature on his psyche.

“Y’know, to be fair, I was in similar shape when I came here awhile back.”

Madara turned to find someone standing on the dusty road after the Uchiha had finished inspecting one of the street’s few tea houses, eyes narrowing suspiciously at the new arrival.

It were as if a lion was given shape, a white mane tied back and longer and more voluminous than his own extending past the stranger’s knees, clad in an olive green, long-sleeved yukata tunic and trousers, mesh armor beneath, a long, sleeveless maroon haori, and geta that made his hulking, towering figure unnecessarily taller. His sole arm propped on his hip thoughtfully, the left sleeve bunched to compensate for the loss, the stranger considered Madara with a crooked, affable smile. Eyes as dark as his own troweled his form slowly, Madara bristling at such close scrutiny.

“How so? Finding abandoned establishments still producing despite the lack of a staff? Or a town, for that matter?” Madara replied crisply, expression utterly droll.

“Hah, yeah… something like that,” the man replied with a scratch to the back of his head. “But, hey, you’re here, aren’t you? Name’s Jiraiya, by the way.” With a dramatic flair did Jiraiya strike a theatrical pose that could only be described as something from kabuki, grinning widely with a zeal that caused even Madara to take a step back. “Jiraiya, the legendary hermit sage of Myōbokuzan, at your service~!” Though, as he straightened with a deep sigh he amended, “’Least, I _was_ , until I wound up here, of all places…”

As the sage deflated, Madara’s lips thinned while his gaze flirted with glancing at the man, this Jiraiya. Where jubilation easily colored his person, he could feel the ache of loneliness as biting as his own. In this place where conflict was no more, there was his own realization that before and after, Madara was exiled and lonely in the wake of his own failure, unsympathetic as it was.

“If all these places are meant for two, and we’re the only ones here… perhaps this strange hospitality shouldn’t be squandered,” Madara ventured reservedly, unable to quite look the sage in the eye.

Jiraiya glanced hopefully at Madara, brightening with boyish glee. “Come on! I know just the place!” Madara could say nothing as the sage jubilantly grabbed his hand and raced up the street. They didn’t run for very long before coming to an unremarkable entrance denoted by a cascading neon sign, an izakaya if Madara ever saw one.

Inside, a ring of low tables and the warm lighting of paper lanterns in such a compact space made for a cozy atmosphere, Jiraiya easily slipping off his geta on the lowered concrete threshold while Madara had to sit to remove his.

“Hey, anyone here!” Jiraiya called out with a chuckle, met with only the steaming bowls of food that ran the length of a freshly stocked buffet. Everything smelled good, Madara had to admit. Especially since he hadn’t eaten anything in literal decades. “I hope you like sake. They really don’t skimp out on the quality.” He flashed a cheeky wink at Madara before finding a wooden pair of trays and helping himself to the buffet.

Madara complacently waited while he assumed Jiraiya would be getting their food, sitting at one of the tables where a warm tokkuri and ochoko cups already waited. With the sage’s back turned, he couldn’t help but feel mildly tetchy, the prime suspect being that he felt as if he’d met Jiraiya before, even though it wasn’t possible. He shook the feeling off when Jiraiya reappeared with a puckish grin and arm laden with food on more than one tray, setting it before them and sitting loosely cross-legged and with a comfortable slouch.

“In a funny way, this is kinda like a date,” Jiraiya quipped after a few cups of sake later, snickering, already pouring himself another. “Good-looking guy like you must’ve been a real lady killer.” Madara gazed in bemusement at the man, noting the faint pink tinging his cheeks. Perhaps… the sage was simply a bit drunk, even though his larger frame suggested the need for far more spirits before he could even dream of reaching such a state of inebriation.

“Are you that lonely that you have to invent such a scenario between yourself and a perfect stranger?” Madara rebutted drolly, a tiredness in his expression.

Jiraiya reared back defensively at first, pouting into his ochoko before he studied the Uchiha for a second longer, uttering a defeated sigh. Setting the cup down, he bit down on a wing of fried chicken from his plate, dipped in some sauce. “You want lonely? A week after coming here, I started using shadow clones and Henge to transform them into people so I wouldn’t feel like I was going batty. Not that it always helps, of course, but it’s better than nothing,” Jiraiya answered bluntly, bitterly. “Not that there’s anything we can do about it, since we’re _dead_.”

Madara held the sake in his hand, jaw set. “ _We?_ ” Jiraiya’s brow furrowed, paused in his chewing as he looked at Madara growing chagrin. “There’s no we. You have your reason for being here, and I have mine. And they’ll be dealt with, _separately_.”

Gods, he was hurting. He hadn’t even realized it, but his heart felt as though it were trying to gnaw its way through flesh and bone. If not for the sage, Madara might have devolved into a frenzied rage at it all. His clan was gone, diminished through the decades like the Senju, gone in only a few generations. That was loneliness of a like this man could barely understand, that Madara had stifled and suppressed into some weighty black stone that sat where his heart was supposed to be.

“Okay, fair enough, but that doesn’t mean we have to be miserable and isolated, do we?” Jiraiya protested as the Uchiha rose to stand, clutching on the hem of his sleeve. “I don’t even know your name. I’m not asking for your life story, jeez…” The grip on Madara’s sleeve was relinquished, a cold feeling washing down Madara’s spine. Ah, of course this was going to come.

“My name?” Madara smiled sarcastically as Jiraiya frowned at him, and in a blink he invoked his Mangekyō Sharingan. “My name… is Madara Uchiha.” The shock that registered on the sage was vindicating, a bitter well of righteousness at such a reaction confirming. It affirmed his villainy, his inhumanity. How he was a god of destruction, and instrument, a dog of fate in order to bring Indra’s other reincarnation some bastardized sense of peace. By burning the bridge he’d crossed, and by the gods, was he incinerated.

“Hang on… that can’t be right,” Jiraiya said with a crack of a disbelieving smile. “You’re just pulling my leg. You’ve gotta be.”

So, this man was familiar with him. Madara smiled darkly. “There was a war,” he began with a deep intonation. “A war that ended just today with my death. I was going to make the world succumb to an eternal sleep where they would live in bliss until they died. But, I was foiled by the Uzumaki brat and a boy who looked almost exactly like my younger brother. A lot of people died because of me.”

Jiraiya froze as Madara spoke, mouth slightly ajar as realization began to trickle on his features. “I… spent most of my life working against you. That brat you’re talking about was my student. My last and greatest.” The sage set his cup down and was unable to look at Madara, the Uchiha noticed with grim satisfaction.

“Then is it clear enough why there is no ‘ _us_ ,’ no ‘ _we_ ’? You don’t forgive the villain, Jiraiya. You offer him your hate, nothing else,” Madara said laconically, deadpanning.

“Then why the _hell_ we were put in this place together? There’s gotta be a reason. I think you know it, but are just too goddamn souped on your own melodrama to see it!” Where Madara expected anger, instead he saw vestiges of compassion through the sage’s indigence, something that made his skin crawl in revulsion. Jiraiya stood up abruptly, robbing Madara of the brief advantage in height than when he’d been seated.

Madara stiffened at the metaphorical olive branch being offered, a plea in the sage’s eyes. “I get it, you fucked up. You think I’d be here otherwise if I wasn’t swimming in regrets? Maybe you are the villain I’ve been working against. And maybe I have a lot of reasons to be angry, but that’s besides the point, isn’t it? Just… don’t act like this is your pride on the line!”

The Uchiha chuckled mirthlessly, shaking his head. “You truly are an idiot. Give it time. Let the realization of who I am sink in, and then you’ll see.”

Without another word, skirting around the sage with his gaze averted, Madara slipped out of the izakaya and into the abandoned streets.

There was somewhere else his heart demanded he be.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: So, I'll admit, I started this story on a whim. The hidden parallelism between Madara and Jiraiya is something that snuck up on me by surprise, and something I wanted to explore and write about. This story is a lot different because it doesn't have some great, cinematic plot. It's literally about two dead guys in purgatory uncovering a lot of hurt and undiscovered history between them, and working towards a reconciliation. I don't think this will wind up being particularly long, but we'll see.
> 
> Of course, it's going to get gay as hell, but that's a bit of a given, isn't it?


End file.
